Silent Hill 2 was pretty smart. Very carefully crafted so that the story can be read in many different ways, and on many different levels. It also has the best set of game endings I have ever seen. Not to mention the game is still scary as balls!
Xenogears and the Xenosaga series. These games have some of the best written stories and most convoluted (for better or for worse) layers of symbolism and meaning that I have seen in an RPG. Some say it is smoke and mirrors, especially in Xenogears, but I honestly think that these games were milestones in terms of video game storytelling.
Grim Fandango is really smart from what I played of it, but eventually I lost interest in the game. I do need to go back and finish it though.
We had two bags of grass, seventy-five pellets of mescaline, five sheets of high-powered blotter acid, a salt shaker half full of cocaine, a whole galaxy of multi-colored uppers, downers, screamers, laughers…Also a quart of tequila, a quart of rum, a case of beer, a pint of raw ether and two dozen amyls. The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. –Raoul Duke
It is hard to shed anything but crocodile tears over White House speechwriter Patrick Buchanan's tragic analysis of the Nixon debacle. "It's like Sisyphus," he said. "We rolled the rock all the way up the mountain...and it rolled right back down on us...." Neither Sisyphus nor the commander of the Light Brigade nor Pat Buchanan had the time or any real inclination to question what they were doing...a martyr, to the bitter end, to a "flawed" cause and a narrow, atavistic concept of conservative politics that has done more damage to itself and the country in less than six years than its liberal enemies could have done in two or three decades. -Hunter S. Thompson
